


Presumption makes a pre out of you and me

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Inception Bingo, M/M, Missing in Action, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 18:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15563721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: Eames knows Arthur wouldn’t just open the door of his safehouse to anyone, so he’s ready for the gun that appears in his face.In fact, he’s so happy to see Arthur—to see that Arthur is intact enough to point a gun at him—that Eames grins right down the barrel.





	Presumption makes a pre out of you and me

**Author's Note:**

> My second bingo fic, for the prompt "missing and presumed dead."

Eames knows Arthur wouldn’t just open the door of his safehouse to anyone, so he’s ready for the gun that appears in his face.

In fact, he’s so happy to see Arthur—to see that Arthur is intact enough to point a gun at him—that Eames grins right down the barrel.

“Eames?” Arthur sounds quieter than Eames remembers.

“The very one, love,” Eames says. “Let me in?”

It’s been three and a half months since Arthur went missing, and three months since dreamshare collectively decided he’d most likely been killed. Eames knows if the situation had been reversed—if he were the one who’d gone missing, who’d been presumed dead after a job—Arthur would have found him much sooner. Arthur is the one who’s good at that sort of thing, at research and investigation and solving problems in the real world.

Eames spent a good portion of those three months sitting on his sofa drinking and thinking about all the things he should have told Arthur when he had the chance. Wondering what Arthur—sharp, unpredictable, secretly hilarious Arthur—might have said back.

It was Ariadne who finally convinced him to get on a plane and come here. If he could figure out what had happened to Arthur, she suggested, maybe he could find some peace of mind.

Instead, eventually, finally, he’d found Arthur. Alive.

Now, Eames steps into the safehouse and waits silently while Arthur locks the door behind him.

The light’s dim in the room—that’s really all this safehouse is, a room with a tiny kitchenette, a single chair, and an uncomfortable-looking bed in the corner—but Eames can see that Arthur is wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It’s a rare sighting of him in non-tailored clothing, and that’s the detail Eames’s brain snags on, maybe to avoid thinking too hard about the weight Arthur’s lost or the hemisphere-sized dark circles under his eyes. He’s limping a bit, too, and moving like there are a few body parts that still hurt.

Eames has had time to prepare for this moment, in all those nights he spent on his sofa regretting unsaid things. It was easy, sitting there alone, to imagine the conversations they might have if Arthur were still alive. The confessions Eames might make. The confessions he suspected (hoped) Arthur might want to make in return.

All that comes out, though, when Eames is finally in the same room as Arthur for the first time in months, is, “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, pet, but I thought you were dead.”

Eames wants to kick himself.

But Arthur doesn’t seem offended. “It’s fine. I assumed everyone would think that. It was safer that way.”

So maybe Arthur hasn’t spent his last three months imagining scenarios in which Eames finds him and helps him back to health, hasn’t imagined conversations or confessions. Maybe it’s best for Eames to follow Arthur’s lead and remain in business mode.

“I have a safehouse not far from here that’s more comfortable,” Eames says. “Come with me, and then we can figure out how to get you out of here safely.”

“How did you find me, anyway?” Arthur asks, as he eases himself gingerly into the room’s sole chair.

Eames doesn’t want to recount the embarrassingly long list of things he did: the interviews with Arthur’s teammates on that last job, his top-to-bottom investigation of their warehouse, hours combing through real estate records and legal papers to piece together who had taken Arthur.

Instead, he admits just a piece of it: “Ariadne said I needed closure.”

“Would’ve been great if you’d needed it three months ago,” Arthur mutters.

_Ah_ , Eames thinks, _there you are_.

And then, lord help him, Eames starts laughing.

He sits there on the floor of Arthur’s rundown safehouse and laughs and laughs—and then Arthur starts laughing, too.

It might be the best sound Eames has heard in his life.

“Darling,” Eames says, as their laughter winds down. “I missed you.”

Eames is a gambler, but this is the riskiest gamble he’s taken in his life. The most nakedly sincere thing he’s ever said to Arthur.

Then again, what else could he possibly say to the man he’s been looking for around every corner for months now? He did miss him. He doesn’t want to be one-half of a _what-if_ ever again; he doesn’t want to be left wondering anymore.

For a minute, Arthur just looks at Eames. Eames has been on the other end of these considering glances from Arthur before, but usually they’re on a job, and the thing being considered is one of Eames’s (intentionally) provocative ideas, not Eames himself.

Eames resists the urge to make a joke, to try to persuade, to explain himself.

Arthur stands up and gathers his few weapons and belongings.

“This isn’t a rescue, Mr. Eames,” he says. There’s a hint of a smile still around his mouth. “Let the record show that I was fine here and am voluntarily choosing to go with you.”

As confessions go, Eames thinks, it’s not a bad one.

“Darling,” Eames says. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


End file.
